ASDA Mobile Review: Low Cost Pay As You Go With Coverage From EE

ASDA Mobile is a low-cost Pay As You Go network with competitive 30-day bundles and 4G coverage from EE.

In the UK, ASDA Mobile is a low-cost Pay As You Go network with competitive rates for calling, texting and browsing. For occasional mobile users, ASDA Mobile charges just 8p/minute, 4p/text and 5p/MB. Meanwhile, regular mobile users can save even more money by buying 30-day bundle from £5/month.

In this article, we’ll take an in-depth look at the ASDA Mobile service. We’ll start by looking at the price plans available from ASDA Mobile and how they compare to the plans available on other mobile networks. We’ll then look at how you can use your handset on ASDA Mobile, the level of coverage you can expect and how to keep your existing phone number.

Pricing & Tariffs

ASDA Mobile offers Pay As You Go with no contracts.

In the UK, ASDA Mobile is a low-cost Pay As You Go mobile network. It’s offered by ASDA, the UK’s second-largest supermarket chain, in conjunction with EE who provide the underlying technology and coverage for the service. There are no contracts to sign when joining ASDA Mobile: you can simply order yourself a free SIM card and top it up to get going.

If you’re either a frequent mobile user or a smartphone owner, a 30-day bundle on ASDA Mobile will normally offer the best value usage. With a 30-day bundle, you can convert your Pay As You Go credit into a 30-day allowance of calls, texts and mobile internet.

Meanwhile, for light and occasional mobile users, ASDA’s traditional Pay As You Go service may offer better value usage. ASDA charges just 8p/minute, 4p/text and 5p/MB on traditional Pay As You Go. There’s no need to top-up every month, and your Pay As You Go credit never expires providing you keep your SIM card active by using it at least once every 270 days.

30 Day Bundles

For regular mobile users and for anyone with a smartphone, the cheapest way to use ASDA Mobile is normally to buy a 30-day bundle.

With a 30-day bundle, you essentially buy your airtime in bulk from ASDA Mobile. This makes it cheaper than traditional Pay As You Go and gives you greater certainty over how much you’ll spend every month.

For instance, someone using 125 minutes, 100 texts and 250MB of data would normally pay £26.50 on traditional Pay As You Go. With a 30-day bundle, you could instead pay a flat-rate of just £5/month for 125 minutes, 2000 texts and 250MB of data.

Alongside the all-inclusive bundles, there’s also a £5 Talk and Text bundle for people who don’t use a smartphone (the bundle comes with 250 minutes and 2000 texts). There are also four data-only bundles (£5 for 500MB of data, £7.50 for 1GB of data, £12.50 for 4GB of data and £15 for 6GB of data).

Pay As You Go

On ASDA Mobile’s traditional Pay As You Go service, you’ll only pay for what you actually use on a per-minute, per-text and per-megabyte basis. Your credit will also never expire providing your SIM card remains active (you can keep it active by using the SIM card at least once every 270 days).

Calls to ASDA Mobile customer service on 2732 are free. A full list of rates can be found on the ASDA Mobile website (scroll to the bottom of the page). This includes the rates for using your mobile phone abroad in other countries through international roaming, and the cost of making international phone calls from the UK.

In general, ASDA Mobile compares pretty well against other Pay As You Go mobile networks for their rates. Their 8p/minute and 4p/text tariff is cheaper than most mainstream networks. They also allow you to keep your credit indefinitely providing your SIM card remains active, and top-ups are available from as little as £1 each time.

£10 per month bundles

The closest alternative is giffgaff’s £10 goodybag. This comes with a larger allowance of phone calls (unlimited minutes) rather than ASDA Mobile’s 600 minutes per month. giffgaff’s £10 goodybag also includes unlimited texts and 3GB of data. giffgaff makes use of coverage from O2, whereas ASDA Mobile makes use of coverage from EE.

£15 per month bundles

As an alternative to ASDA Mobile, giffgaff offers the £15 goodybag as a possible alternative. This comes with unlimited minutes, unlimited texts and 8GB of data. On giffgaff, you’ll get coverage from O2 rather than EE.

£20 per month bundles

For most people, we’d probably recommend giffgaff as a better value alternative to ASDA Mobile. For £20/month, you’ll get unlimited minutes, unlimited texts and 20GB of data on giffgaff. Alternatively, there’s also a £25 goodybag on giffgaff with Always-On data (unlimited downloads with 4G speeds on the first 20GB of data per month).

Credit Expiry & Inactivity Policy

You should try and use your phone at least once every 180 days.

On ASDA Mobile, your Pay As You Go credit doesn’t expire (this is assuming you aren’t converting your Pay As You Go credit into a 30-day bundle). To keep the credit active on your account, you do however need to make sure your SIM card remains active.

The easiest way to keep your ASDA SIM card fully active is to use it for a chargeable activity at least once every 180 days. Your Pay As You Go credit will only expire if your SIM card is left unused for more than 270 days.

The following gives a timeline of what might happen to an unused ASDA Mobile SIM card:

If your SIM card has been used within the past 180 days: As long as you use your SIM card at least once every 180 days, your Pay As You Go credit on ASDA Mobile will never expire.

If more than 180 days of inactivity have passed on the SIM card: If more than 180 days have passed since your last chargeable activity, ASDA Mobile will suspend your outgoing phone calls. You’ll need to call them on 0800 079 2732 from another phone to reactivate outgoing phone calls on the SIM card. In the mean time, you’ll still be able to receive incoming phone calls and your Pay As You Go credit will still remain on your account.

If more than 270 days of inactivity have passed on the SIM card: If more than 270 days have passed since your last chargeable activity, your SIM card will be suspended by ASDA Mobile. You’ll no longer be able to make any phone calls and your Pay As You Go credit will also be removed. At this point, you can still call ASDA Mobile customer services on 0800 079 2732 to recover your phone number.

If more than 360 days of inactivity have passed on the SIM card: After 360 days of inactivity on your account, your phone number is deleted and can no longer be recovered.

Network & Coverage

2G, 3G & 4G Coverage from EE

ASDA Mobile uses EE as its network coverage provider, so customers using ASDA Mobile will get the exact same coverage as customers on EE.

At the time of writing, ASDA Mobile offers 99% population coverage, including on EE’s 2G, 3G and 4G network. This translates through to about 90% geographical coverage, with the promise this will increase to 95% by 2020. In our opinion, this is a strong plus point of choosing the ASDA Mobile network as EE have the widest 4G coverage of any mobile network at present.

Before ordering a SIM card from ASDA Mobile, we strongly recommend checking the coverage in your area. You can do this by entering your postcode on the ASDA Mobile website:

International Roaming

If you have a 30-day bundle, you can use your inclusive bundle allowances when travelling in Europe. Otherwise, if you don’t have an active bundle on your account, you’ll pay ASDA Mobile’s normal Pay As You Go rates of 8p/minute, 4p/text and 5p/MB.

After receiving your new SIM card from ASDA Mobile, you’ll need to contact ASDA Mobile Customer Services to give them your PAC Code. You can do this by calling 2732 from your ASDA Mobile SIM card or by calling 0800 079 2732 from any other phone.

After providing your PAC Code to ASDA Mobile, it will normally take about one working day for your phone number to be moved over. It isn’t possible to transfer Pay As You Go credit from your old network, so you should try to use it up before moving networks.

Your Comments
108 so far

tonysaid:

I have been using the ASDA mobile network for 3 years with no problems. I had a slight delay when transferring my number over to them when first joining ASDA, but a call to the help desk had it sorted straight away. Great value monthly bundles, no contract, whats not to like, I recommend them.
As they use the EE network comments about slow data transfer speeds could mean you are in a poor reception area for the EE network. I have yet to find a poor reception spot anywhere in London.

Jason Cartwrightsaid:

Currently ASDA are offering double data and double minutes for their monthly tariffs, until late August, so I took the opportunity to transfer my mobile operator from Three to ASDA.

The outcome proved fatal, a big mistake, for ASDA’s data network is excruciatingly slow. I never encountered slow data transfer on Three’s network nor when using Wi-Fi.

Regardless of the time of day, in the middle of the night or during the day, ASDA’s network is torturously slow. I previously encountered no speed problems with Three, and have no speed problems when using Wi-Fi.

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About Ken

My passion is helping people to get the most out of their mobile phone. I've been blogging at Ken's Tech Tips since 2005.

Aside from writing about mobile technology, I have an interest in software development, digital marketing and physics. Outside of the blog, I work with numerous technology companies helping them to market their product to consumers. Find out more.